


Optics

by kethni



Category: Veep (TV)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21915370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kethni/pseuds/kethni
Summary: ‘A valid presidential candidate needs a polished and charismatic partner. That’s not me. No amount of media training can change that sufficiently. You know that. You would make the sensible choice.’
Relationships: Kent Davison/Selina Meyer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Optics

**Author's Note:**

> For CrazyMaryT

Amy didn’t know what to say. Improvising wasn’t her strength. She could admit that. It wasn’t a _terrible_ thing to say. She wasn’t bad at it. She was at least as good as Dan. But she was better at planning and strategizing when she had the time to do proper research. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good at it. She was just better at other things.

So, when Selina asked her about Kent, she totally blanked. Thank fuck that Selina wasn’t really asking. She didn’t want Amy giving an actual answer. Hell, even a bland, meaningless answer risked giving something away.

What did she even know about Kent that she could say? He was close to his mom. He had a dry as fuck sense of humour. He didn’t grab her ass or comment on her body.

He made Selina scream like nobody else. Oops. Scratch that.

She could’ve listed Selina’s last ten partners by how good they were. The glamour of politics.

Then he’d quit right after the election and Selina had screamed and carried on in a whole _other_ way. One that made everything fucking miserable for everyone for weeks.

She hoped all that wasn’t going to start again. Sure, Selina was making out that she barely knew Kent and that her only feelings for him were antagonistic. But she fucking _hated_ Andrew and she was always falling into bed with him. ‘Course she picked him up and put him down on a whim. Andrew leaving barely got rolled eyes from her.

***

Ben slumped in the guest chair and put his feet up on Kent’s desk.

‘Stop that,’ Kent said, not looking up from the paperwork that he was leafing through.

‘Make me,’ Ben grunted. He scratched his belly. ‘I told Meyer.’

Kent paused, but didn’t look up from his paperwork. ‘Told her what?’

‘That you’re here now.’ Ben rested his hands on his belly. ‘She went running off with a bug up her ass.’

Kent sighed. ‘How did she seem?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Hysterical. Self-absorbed. You know. Same as usual.’

Kent frowned as he looked at her. ‘Hysterical is a very loaded term.’

Ben balled up a piece of paper and threw it at Kent. ‘Agitated then. Frantic. Are they better? Do they trigger your “sounds kind of woman-hating” alarm?’

Kent put his hand on his hip. ‘Hysterical literally means “relating to the uterus,” in the Latin.’

‘Oh.’ Ben shrugged. ‘When that’s not what I meant, and you know it.’ He tilted his head. ‘She’s over you. She was over you two weeks after you split so don’t flatter yourself.’

Kent scowled at him. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Right,’ Ben sniffed. ‘And POTUS doesn’t know either.’

Kent slammed down the fistful of paperwork. ‘You told POTUS?’

‘It’s my fucking job!’

‘You pick a hell of a time to start doing it.’

***

Catherine dragged up her head and reached around blindly. After a few seconds she found her cell. She squinted at the screen. Since when did her mom text her? She could barely turn her cell on. Couldn’t be good. Catherine unlocked her cell on the third try and pulled up her texts.

“Election” was the first word that hit her eye. Election? Was mom texting at… 2 am about the midterms? Catherine nearly threw the cell across the room.

Then she noticed another word “Kent” which led immediately to “Davison” which led to “is working for POTUS.”

Huh.

Catherine rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. She considered asking her mom if sending these kinds of messages to an unsecured cell was a good idea. At the time it had been this huge fricking secret. Like anyone cared. He wasn’t married. He wasn’t a bank robber, or a murderer, or something. He was just a guy who worked for a guy she worked with. Everyone in politics thought they were _so_ important. Most people on campus probably couldn’t have picked Selina out of a line-up, let alone Kent. Catherine could barely pick him out of a group.

She’d only met him a few times, and one of those was her mom was carrying on about the rafting trip. Like they hadn’t all done much worse than that.

He hadn’t made a big deal about trying to be friendly with Catherine. Way too many of her mom’s boyfriends did that, especially when she was a kid. He’d been around during the campaign, even before he had any real excuse to be. Catherine hadn’t been _surprised_ that her mom would end up sleeping with her opponent’s chief strategist, but she was disgusted. God, he could’ve been doing it to get one over on her mom! All the dumb shit that her camp did and had to hide, and she was just letting him into her hotel rooms with access to all kinds of classified info.

Catherine didn’t even want to _think_ about whatever her pillow talk was. Ew.

Her mom was so damn lucky that he’d been an okay guy. He could’ve really screwed her over. God, she hoped that her mom wasn’t going to be too awful to him. Catherine bet he still knew stuff that could screw her over.

Not that her mom would think about that. All she’d be thinking about was how mad she was when he left her.

***

Gary winced as Selina threw something against her wall. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so mad at an ex that she did that.

Wait. No. That wasn’t true. It was Kent. Ugh. Poor Selina.

‘Gary!’ she screamed. ‘Coffee!’

‘She’s woken up on the wrong side of the desk,’ Sue said dryly.

‘She doesn’t sleep at her desk,’ Gary protested. ‘She has a cot.’

Sue looked at him. ‘Yes, Gary. That was the joke.’

He pulled a face as he made the coffee. ‘Ha ha.’

‘Don’t forget to put on a football helmet before you go in,’ Dan said.

‘She’s not going to throw something at me,’ Gary huffed.

Dan shrugged. ‘She banged Kent pretty good.’

‘What?’ Gary demanded. ‘What have you heard?’

They stared at him.

‘…That she hit him in the eye with a lipstick,’ Dan said. ‘What did you mean?’

Gary pushed open the door to Selina’s office. ‘That. I meant that.’

Selina had dealt with her exhaustion with too little sleep and too many uppers. This meant that she was now agitated and distracted.

Also, she was very, _very_ thirsty.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, grabbing the coffee from Gary and gulping it.

‘I put a little turmeric in,’ Gary said. ‘It’s good for inflammation.’

‘Why? Do I look inflamed? Are my eyes red and puffy? Jesus. Did he make me do a bunch of TV interviews with puffy eyes?’

‘Nooo,’ Gary promised. ‘You look beautiful.’

Selina pushed back her hair. ‘Is he still in? Did he go home to sleep or anything?’

‘I think he went to yoga,’ Gary said.

‘Shit!’

‘Did you want a meeting? I can ask Sue…’

‘If he doesn’t go home for a nap then I can’t!’ Selina snarled.

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s how it works!’ She threw herself into her chair. ‘I can’t believe this has happened.’

Gary made a sympathetic noise. ‘Shall I get the cot out again?’

‘…Yeah.’

***

Dan stalked behind Amy as she headed to her office.

‘What do you want, Dan?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Because I have a stun gun.’

‘What’s the deal with Davison?’ he asked, perching on her desk as she sat down.

Amy pretended to focus on her laptop. ‘Aw, did daddy not give you a big cuddle?’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Is that what’s driving Selina nuts?’

Amy shrugged. ‘Personality clash.’

Dan picked up a pen from the pot on her desk. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘The kind of “personality clash” that we have?’

‘No idea what you mean,’ Amy said breezily.

‘Okay,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll ask Mike, or Gary.’

Amy snorted. ‘Like Gary would tell you anything.’

‘Not on purpose,’ Dan said with a grin. ‘I get him riled up enough and who knows what’ll come out?’

Amy gave him a sour look. ‘Why do you care?’

‘I need to know! It’s my job,’ he said seriously. Then he cracked into a smile. ‘Come on, Ames, Davison is my ticket out of the VP’s office. I need all the background info I can get.’

‘She hates him now, that’s all you need to know,’ Amy said.

‘Aha!’ Dan said. ‘She didn’t hate him before.’

‘Didn’t say that.’

Dan stood up and strolled to the door. ‘Yeah, you did.’

‘No, I didn’t!’

Shit. Amy threw down her pen as Dan left. The truth was she didn’t know what the fuck had happened. She wasn’t even sure why the whole damn thing about been such a damn secret. They’d both been single. Kent wasn’t working for her. They were pretty much age appropriate. He didn’t have some weird or creepy history, at least not that they could find during oppo research. Honestly, he was probably the least wildly inappropriate partner she’d had in the last five years.

Plus, he seemed to make Selina happy, or at least as close to happy as Selina got.

Amy shuddered. Weird.

***

Didn’t those assholes yelling outside her office know that she was trying to sleep? Jesus, the amount of time they spent screaming and smashing shit and they couldn’t knock it off for just a _couple_ of hours?

She dragged herself to her feet, ran her fingers through her hair, and stomped over to the door. ‘Shut up! What are you yelling about? Shut up!’

Ben was leaning over Sue’s desk, aiming at her a glare that had reduced presidents and prime ministers to nervous stuttering.

It was only serving to mildly annoy Sue.

‘See,’ Ben said. ‘She’s awake.’

‘Naturally she’s awake,’ Sue retorted. ‘She is also _busy_.’

Selina threw up her arms. ‘I’m right here! Jesus! Come in, Ben. You’ve got… Sue?’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Five minutes,’ Selina said, and let Ben stomp past her into the office.

‘I need to get one of those,’ Ben said, tapping the leg of her cot with his foot.

‘You’ve got your giant mug.’

Ben nodded. ‘I wouldn’t give that up. I love that mug.’

Selina sat down. ‘Uh-huh, sure. What can I do for you, Ben?’

Ben sat opposite her. ‘You can grow up.’

‘ _Excuse me_?’ 

Ben spread his hands. ‘Look, I get that he’s a massive pain in the ass. I fucking hate him too, but Jesus, Selina. I don’t go around punching him in the face.’

Selina waved her hand as Gary scurried in with coffees. ‘I didn’t _punch_ him. It was an accident. If Gary hadn’t been wafting around that lipstick –’

Gary made a small sound between a squeak and a moan. They both ignored him.

‘Well you can’t “accidentally hit him with lipstick” again,’ Ben said. ‘It makes us look bad and it completely fucks over office morale.’

Selina pulled a face and takes a sip of coffee. ‘Okay, fine, I’ll try to resist the urge to belt Kent in the eye.’

Ben glanced meaningfully at Gary. Selina narrowed her eyes.

‘Gary, go organise lunch.’

He sniffed slightly and nodded.

As the door shut behind him, Ben leaned forward.

‘It’s been two years, Selina, you need to get over it.’

‘What?’ she laughed too brightly. ‘Oh, I barely even remember it.’

Ben clasped his hands together. ‘It’s not like he cheated on you.’

Selina straightened her skirt. ‘How the fuck do I know what he was doing? He didn’t give me an explanation worth a damn. He just quit and took off.’

Ben tilted his head. ‘You don’t know why he ended things with you?’

‘I didn’t even know he’d told you we were seeing each other.’

Ben blew out his cheeks. ‘Don’t blame the messenger. This is gonna be rough.’

***

The problem with any job, in Kent’s experience, was inevitably the human element. Although he was currently wondering if Jonah actually qualified as human. Certainly, Kent had experienced more logical and rational conversations with his cats than with the younger man. There was a fraction of a moment of intense relief then when the door to his office was thrown open. It began when he registered what the movement meant and ended when he registered that it was Selina throwing open his door.

‘Get out,’ she ordered Jonah.

He glanced at Kent, who nodded. Selina noticed Jonah checking with Kent, and her jaw clenched.

‘Should I fetch some goggles?’ Kent asked. ‘Perhaps a hard hat?’

‘I’ve got intention of going for your head,’ she snarled.

Kent sighed and checked his watch. ‘It’s been less than four hours. I’m not aware of anything I’ve done in that timeframe that would have spurred this reaction.’

She stalked around his desk. His sat up straight and moved back a little.

‘Do you think this is a _joke_?’ she demanded.

‘I have no idea what this is,’ he said.

‘I’m supposed to believe that Ben didn’t tell you?’ she demanded. ‘Apparently despite hating each other’s guts you take time out to discuss being patronising fuckers.’

Kent shifted uncomfortably. ‘Selina, I legitimately have _no_ idea what you are talking about.’

She leaned on the desk, completely blocking his exit. ‘He _told_ me about the poll.’

Kent licked his lips. ‘The poll.’

‘Yeah!’ She poked his shoulder. ‘How dare you! How dare you do that damn poll and how dare you decide to just… take off because of it!’

Kent was quiet for a moment. ‘You still harbour ambitions to be president and –’

‘You dumped me because you can’t cope with my ambition!’ she hissed. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

He looked down at his hands. ‘That makes no sense and you know that.’

He heard Selina let out an angry breath. ‘Don’t tell me that you dumped me because some fucking poll said dating you would tank my approval ratings.’

He set his shoulders. ‘What would you like me to say?’

‘You should’ve said something to me _then_! I had a right to make that choice!’ she insisted.

Kent looked at her. ‘And you would have made it,’ he said.

She folded her arms. ‘Am I supposed to be grateful that you “spared” me from that?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I did it to spare myself from it. It was entirely selfish.’

She set her jaw. ‘You don’t know that’s what would have happened. Maybe I’d have decided to fight, did you think about that?’ 

‘To fight what?’ he asked. ‘A valid presidential candidate needs a polished and charismatic partner. That’s not me. No amount of media training can change that sufficiently. You know that. You would make the sensible choice.’

Selina shook her head as she stepped back. ‘I was fucking _happy_. You ever think about that?’

‘You wouldn’t have been happy if I stopped you getting the presidency,’ he said quietly.

Selina walked back to the door. ‘That wasn’t your choice to make,’ she said. ‘It was never your choice to make.’

The End. 


End file.
